


Paint the Town Dead

by Gin_Juice



Series: picture book [6]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Ben is an anxious little bean, Canon Jewish Character, Enemies to Friends, Family Bonding, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Good Guy Dave Katz, Klaus is a good boyfriend but he's also just like a LOT, Male Bonding, Post-Apocalypse, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 04:45:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19716478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gin_Juice/pseuds/Gin_Juice
Summary: “Why don’t we go out? Most of my friends won’t be stateside until the fall, but I think we can still find a way to get ourselves in trouble.”Ben blinked in surprise. By ‘friends,’ did Dave mean living people, or dead ones?“I have a spot in mind. What do you say?”“I… guess.”____________________________________________Dave has been found, Ben is jealous, and they might have just become best friends.





	Paint the Town Dead

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a series, but you don't have to read previous installments to follow along. The Apocalypse has been averted, and Klaus and ghost Ben are living at the Academy with Five and Luther. Klaus and Dave have been recently reunited. There's also a Random Old Man Ghost (TM) who visits the house sometimes to share his wisdom.

Klaus was annoying at baseline, but excited, exuberant, extremely ~in love~ Klaus was a whole new level of exasperating.

He was constantly talking to Dave, or about Dave, or staring dreamily into his eyes. He would make him corporeal—which, considering how many months he and Ben had spent trying to perfect the process, seemed to have become pretty dang simple as soon as a guy he wanted to make out with entered the picture—just so that he could climb all over him like the world’s neediest octopus.

If Dave started talking to one of their siblings, Klaus would be suddenly overcome by the urge to kiss him.

If Dave got too interested in something in the newspaper, Klaus would recall a funny story that he had to tell him.

If Dave even got lost in his own private thoughts for a second, there was Klaus, crawling into his lap or wanting a spot on his back scratched or needing to know his opinions on tube socks _immediately_.

Dave bore it all with good humor and infinite patience.

Ben wanted to headbutt both of them.

It wasn’t fair to hate Dave. He was absurdly nice, and he treated Klaus so well it was disgusting. But Klaus could now go entire days without saying more than a few words to Ben, who had been his sole companion for over a decade of sleeping in abandoned houses and overdosing in gas station bathrooms, and…

Well, it shouldn’t matter. Didn’t matter. It wasn’t like it was a competition to see who loved Klaus more.

(Or to see who Klaus loved more, because Ben was pretty sure he knew who’d win that one.)

So he smiled and got on with his un-life. He’d been able to take physical form more often in the past three weeks than in the three months that came before it, and it was nice to be able to interact with rest of the family.

Allison hugged him sometimes. Mom was teaching him how to bake. He wished Dave would take his gentle smiles and his inoffensive jokes and his excellent social skills and fuck right off, but things were okay.

(And if he despised himself for feeling like a jealous ex in the face of his brother’s happiness, that was his own business.)

It was just before midnight on a Wednesday, and Ben knew the exact moment that Klaus drifted off to sleep because the book he’d been reading fell through his hands and onto the floor.

He stared down at it wistfully.

Klaus was sprawled out on the sofa behind him, already drooling. The shifting light of the television splashed across his face, but Dave must have had the foresight to turn the volume down low before he knocked out for the night.

Dave was considerate like that. It was insufferable.

Ben got up from his seat at the bar and wandered over to the couch. Dave was watching Klaus’s sleeping face with a fond smile, and the silver-haired Australian ghost who dropped in from time to time was sitting in the armchair next to them.

“What are you guys watching?” Ben asked in a low tone. “It isn’t infomercials again, is it?”

God, he hoped not. Whatever channel they’d landed on would be the only entertainment for the rest of the night, and a person could only watch the Magic Bullet ad so many times without descending into madness.

Dave shook his head. “We found some ‘Cinema Classics’ thing. It’s pretty good.”

“Really?” Ben asked. “I thought Luther was going to cancel all the extra cable channels.”

Dave smiled wryly. “He tried to, but they talked him into doing a free trial of _more_ channels.”

“Reckon he should’ve had the little snippy one call,” the old man mumbled.

Ben leaned over to see the program. “What is this?” A black-and-white figure in a cape stalked menacingly across the screen, and his heart sank. “Is this a horror movie?”

He hated horror movies. He knew it was silly, because what was left for a dead man to fear? But he’d always been of the opinion that people who liked being scared belonged in a mental institution, and it turned out dying hadn’t changed that.

“Mm. They’re doing a marathon,” Dave informed him. “This is the 1931 version of _Dracula_ , and next is _The Black Cat_.”

He grinned. He had a dimple in his left cheek, which made Klaus swoon every time he saw it. “There’s worse ways to spend a Wednesday night than watching Bela Lugosi get older and sadder, hey?”

The old man—he had never given his name, but Klaus had taken to calling him ‘Corpse-odile Dundee’ when he wasn’t around—snorted. Ben hummed out a laugh, too, although he wasn’t entirely certain who Bela Lugosi was.

Dave knew, of course. Dave knew all about classic cinema. And modern cinema. And which cars were cool. And hockey and fixing sinks and balancing checkbooks and making eggs sunny-side-up and…

(…And the last several weeks with him around had forced Ben to face the uncomfortable fact that feeling normal and put-together in comparison to Klaus was setting the bar pretty low.)

“Well, I’m going to go see if there’s any animals hanging out in the yard,” he said. “See you guys later.”

“Oh.” Dave tilted his head up at him. “Not in the mood for TV?”

Ben shrugged to hide his unease. He didn’t think Dave would make fun of him for hating scary stuff, but it would still be embarrassing to admit to it.

“I’ve been indoors all day.”

Dave nodded, his face looking thoughtful. After a moment, he seemed to come to a decision, and stood up.

“Why don’t we go out?” he suggested. “Most of my friends won’t be stateside until the fall, but I think we can still find a way to get ourselves in trouble.”

Ben blinked in surprise. By ‘friends,’ did Dave mean living people, or dead ones?

“Oh, uh… I don’t know,” he said haltingly. He gestured to Klaus. “What if he wakes up?”

Dave laughed. “Well, I sure hope he wakes up at some point,” he said with obvious amusement. “Preferably tomorrow morning. I think he can manage without us for a few hours, though.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” the old man broke in without looking away from the movie. He sat slouched in the armchair with his knees spread wide, his boxer shorts and undershirt eternally rumpled by the sleep from which he’d never awoken.

If he’d had a beer in one hand and the TV remote in the other, Ben mused, the picture would have been complete.

He waved his reassurance. “No wuckas, mate.”

No—what now? Ben looked questioningly to Dave, who shrugged.

“I have a spot in mind,” he said. “What do you say?”

“I… guess.”

{}{}{}{}{}

Ben usually didn’t go far from Klaus.

At first, he couldn’t. Whenever he’d tried, his vision would blur and his mind would cloud, and he’d been forced to go stumbling back.

It had become easier with time—he could make it as far as the airport without him, and suspected he could go even further than that if he wanted—but for the most part, he chose to remain where things were familiar.

What did it mean, that he could now detach himself from the person who had once served as his anchor to the living world? Was he growing apart from him? From their shared past? From his own humanity?

What if he went out for a walk one day and just, like, accidentally wandered into the afterlife somehow?

Did heaven exist?

Did hell?

Who, if anyone, knew the answers to these questions, and where could Ben find their phone number?

Dave obviously did not share any of these concerns.

He strolled loose-limbed and unhurried through the city streets, stopping on occasion to examine something that had caught his fancy. A dog. A bracelet in a shop window. A bicycle cop writing up a parking ticket.

He’d said wherever they were going wasn’t too far, but each step away from the house was making Ben more anxious.

They paused again, this time to watch two young men try to jumpstart a car.

“Aw, they’ve got the cables hooked up all wrong,” Dave noted in disappointment. “You’re gonna fry your battery, bud!”

Ben fiddled with the zipper of his jacket, feeling inexplicably like an awkward teenager. “Um, Dave?” he said hesitantly.

Dave turned and looked at him, brows raised.

“I think I might go home. I’m… kind of tired.”

Okay, he’d never been great at lying, but that was stupid even for him. Ghosts did not get tired, a fact of which Dave was most certainly aware, judging by the knowing smile on his face.

“Well, sure, if you want,” he said in a light tone. “But we’re just going to the next block. Think you can last another fifteen minutes or so? It’d be nice to have some company.”

Well, when he put it like that, what choice did he really have?

“Yeah. Sure.”

Fucking Dave.

Minutes later, they stood in front of a tidy row home with ivy overflowing from the window boxes.

Ben eyed the greenery with unease. “I think somebody still lives here. Do you know them?”

“Nope,” Dave told him cheerily. “Total strangers. They’ve got a fantastic baby, though. Come on!”

He jogged up the steps and phased through the door. Ben gawked after him.

‘Baby’ had to be some obscure ‘60s slang term he’d never heard of, right? There was no way he was talking about an actual human baby.

…He was talking about an actual human baby.

Ben crept warily through the nursery, positive that if he was capable of sweating, he would be drenched.

“Dave!” he hissed. “Dave! Are you crazy? We have to leave!”

“Oh, we will in a few minutes. Won’t we? Won’t we? Yes, we will!” Dave crooned, in the high, silly voice people adopted for such occasions.

He was at the foot of a bassinet, wriggling his fingers over it. To Ben’s shock, a childish peal of laughter pierced the air.

He took in a sharp breath and swiftly drew up next to him. The infant was no more than a few months old, in his inexpert opinion, and it was watching Dave’s fingers with a wet, beaming smile.

“Can… Can it see us?” he asked in wonder.

“Yes, she can!” Dave said, still in the doofy baby-friendly voice. “She sure can! Not aaaaall babies can see us! Not aaaaaaall babies! But some can.”

“Wow,” Ben breathed.

He stared down at the small yellow bundle, taking in the tiny, grasping fingers, the over-large eyes. It blinked up at him, blowing happy little bubbles of drool.

“Klaus and I never spent much time around kids,” he admitted, unable to look away.

“I understand completely,” Dave cooed.

Ben felt a bit self-conscious about talking to the child—what if his voice made it cry or something?—but he stretched out a hand and wiggled his fingers like Dave had been doing.

Its eyes went impossibly wide and it squawked in toothless delight.

Ben swore he felt the heart that no longer beat squeeze tight in his chest.

{}{}{}{}{}

Ben didn’t typically like walking around the city after dark— that was when Bad Things were wont to happen, in his experience—but that night, with Dave, it seemed less threatening than usual.

Full of possibilities, rather than danger.

They wandered the streets aimlessly while Dave listed off things they could do next, or table for future excursions.

Jumping off a high building—always a good time.

Sneaking into the aquarium and diving into the tanks—very relaxing, and Ben wouldn’t even believe how beautiful it was to just sit underwater and watch marine life swim by.

Hitting up the amusement park and going on all the rides for free, with no lines—a daytime-only adventure, but a must-do.

Movies—pick a show time.

Stage productions—on Broadway or off?

Concerts—did Ben know how many dead people planned to just follow Phish around for eternity? Dave didn’t see the appeal, but to each their own, he guessed.

As they walked, Dave peppered in anecdotes about his own life (after death).

“For the first few years, I was trapped where I died,” he explained. “It was alright for a while. A bunch of the guys from our squad bought it the same night I did, so there was plenty of company. But then everybody else either moved on to…whatever comes next, or they started losing it.

“So, I thought, ‘Man, what am I gonna do? Sit in a muddy field with a bunch of crazy people until the end of days? I’d rather go see the Grand Canyon.’”

So he had. He’d pushed at the invisible boundaries holding him hostage until they finally gave away, and then… freedom.

He’d checked in on his family, watched the nieces and nephews who had never met him in the flesh grow up. He’d gone to art galleries and mountains and old friends’ weddings and Chernobyl. Met the ghosts of people he would never have encountered in life.

He’d learned new dance moves and attended shul, gone to NASA launches and checked out the bottom of the Marianas Trench with a Texas Ranger who’d been killed in the line of duty.

“What did you guys see down there?” Ben asked, fascinated.

“Nothing,” said Dave. “It was too dark.”

More non-insane ghosts were out there, he promised. They were a very slim minority, but they existed.

His theory was that they were the souls who had lingered not because of a fixation on something—a person they loved or hated, passing on a message or getting revenge—but simply because they weren’t done with the world yet.

“And you know, the hell of it is, it’s easier to make friends now than when you’re alive,” he told Ben as they sat atop a car. “Everybody is just so happy to meet someone else who can hold a normal conversation, you’re instantly buddies for life.”

His lips quirked into a self-deprecating smile. “Or for whatever.”

Ben huffed in amusement and lay back, crossing his arms behind his head. That sounded nice. Having ghost friends. Having friends.

“How do you stay in touch, though?” he asked idly. The city lights were too bright to make out any stars, but the moon shone big and clear in the dark. “It sounds like you’re all travelling all the time.”

“It can get tricky,” Dave admitted. “Usually we set up places and times and hope we both remember. Some people settle down, though.”

He lay back, too, with a relaxed sigh. “One of my ‘Nam buddies stayed in Da Nang. Met a girl and she didn’t want to leave her hometown, so…” He waved a hand. “He’s always easy to find.”

Ben propped himself up on his elbows. “Wait. What do you mean?”

“Well, you know, they’re in the city, and they’ve got a few spots they usually hang—“

“No, no, I meant—he met a girl? Like… a dead one?”

Dave’s brows rose as he studied Ben’s shocked face. “Yeah. A dead one.”

He cleared his throat, and added delicately, “You know that ghosts can touch each other, right?”

No. No, Ben had not known that. He sagged backwards on the car, his mind reeling.

“It takes a lot of practice, and you have to concentrate pretty hard,” Dave went on. “I think maybe you haven’t been dead long enough to do it yet. But, it’s possible.”

“Holy shit,” Ben muttered.

Dave had sat up and was looking down at him with a sad gleam in his eye. He coughed lightly. “I know you look older, but you were young when you died, right? In your teens?”

Ben understood exactly where he was going with this, and he was too shell-shocked by the revelations of the last few minutes to feel ashamed.

“I never had a first kiss,” he told Dave. “I never went on a date, or… I don’t think I ever even talked to a girl I wasn’t related to. Not really. There was so much stuff I never…”

He swallowed.

It felt funny to be talking like this. He never unburdened himself to his siblings, because it wouldn’t be fair to complain about being dead to people who were still alive.

Dave gazed down at him, his eyes gentle and full of sympathy. “Oh, Ben,” he said in an achingly soft voice. “I’m so sorry.”

Ben closed his eyes. Could Dave touch other ghosts? Would it be weird if he asked him for a hug? Probably.

Unexpectedly, Dave drew in a sharp breath and snapped his fingers. “Angelo!”

Ben’s eyes fluttered open. “What?”

“My pal Angelo!” Dave exclaimed, beaming. “He was going to stay here until Labor Day, and you can’t be around that dumbass and still feel blue—I bet I know where we can find him. Come on!”

Dave scrambled off the car, and Ben followed with a little reluctance.

The idea of making ghost pals was all well and good, but he’d thought he would have more time to prepare. Dave and Corpse-odile Dundee were the first new people he’d met in over a decade, and it wasn’t like he’d been a social butterfly to start with.

“Oh, man, Ange is a riot, you’ll love him. Fair warning, though—he was into some shady stuff back when he was alive, and he died after somebody emptied a Browning Automatic into him. He’s even gooier than I am.”

Dave led them down endless streets until the neighborhoods began to look familiar, in a bad way. They passed a corner where Klaus had once passed out and pissed himself. Ben remembered people stepping over him, wholly unconcerned.

“He’s usually hanging around the apartment buildings down here,” Dave told him. “He thinks he’s the neighborhood watch, it’s hilarious.”

They turned down an alleyway Dave seemed to think was promising and scoured the fire escapes.

“Hmm,” he said thoughtfully as they paused next to a dumpster. “If he’s not here, then maybe—“

“Susmariosep!” a female voice with a lilting accent called from somewhere above them. “Is that David Katz I see?”

Dave craned his head up. “Cora!”

The woman phased down through the fire escape she’d been perched on. She looked to be in her late teens or early twenties—around Ben’s actual age— and had obviously died sopping wet.

She had large, dark eyes that glittered with mischief, and her black hair was pulled back into a dripping bun. Her lips were tinged blue, but, quirked into a smile as they were, Ben found that the color seemed less ghastly.

“I was looking for that Angelo, but this is a nicer surprise!” she said as she gave Dave an affectionate pat on the arm. Hadn’t he said making physical contact was difficult? She did it like it was nothing.

“I came to town to see a show. I thought I missed you!”

“Nope, just been busy,” Dave told her cheerily. “Sparking up an old flame, you know.”

“Hm? That little psychic boy you always talk about?”

“Reunited and it feels so good,” Dave confirmed.

She laughed, sweet and full-throated. “Congratulations! Or ‘Mazel Tov,’ as you might say.”

Her gaze moved past him to rest on Ben, and she smiled. “Now, who’s this one?”

“Uh,” Ben said eloquently.

“This is Ben. He’s my boyfriend’s brother.” 

She hummed in interest. “Ah. Nice to meet you, Ben.”

He unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Hilo. I mean… Hello. Hi. Uh. Both?”

Dave’s face contorted like he was trying not to laugh. Ben was extremely glad that the dead were incapable of blushing. Or sweating. Or dying a second time, of mortification.

“We were looking for Angelo, too, but you know, Cora, this is actually perfect,” Dave said.

He gestured to Ben like he would a gameshow prize. “Ben here hasn’t been dead all that long yet, and he doesn’t believe me that ghosts can touch one another.”

What? No, he believed him. Why would Dave think he didn’t believe him?

“I’m not that great at it myself,” he continued, and then his tone turned teasing. “But I was thinking that maybe _you_ , as senior leadership in the ghost community—“

“Are you calling me old?” She clicked her tongue. “Fresh!”

Dave grinned at Ben, dimple flashing. “Cora died in… What year was it?”

“1754,” she announced, and her eyes sparkled with cheeky pleasure at Ben’s obvious surprise.

“You... look younger.” There, a coherent sentence!

She tilted her head and beamed at Dave. “Ah, you should spend more time with this one, David! Maybe he can teach you a manner. Only one manner, though, or else you’ll start calling me ‘ma’am.’”

Dave snorted as she looked back to Ben. “Anyhow. You want me to show you, _pogi?_ Hold out your hands.”

He did, and she took a step closer. She cleared her throat and shook out her arms, as if she was getting ready to do a magic trick.

In a way, he supposed she was.

She laid her hands over his, and for a moment, he didn’t feel anything. Then it started, gradually—warmth, pressure. Light, but undeniably there, and then—solid.

“Oh,” he breathed.

He could become actually corporeal now, and for pretty long stretches of time, too, ever since Klaus had found a muse in Dave. He’d been touched more often in the past several weeks than he thought he had in his entire life.

But this was… different. Better, in some ways. This was something he could learn to do on his own, without Klaus’s help.

Something that was just his.

Cora’s dark eyes were dancing, and tiny beads of water hung in eternal suspension from her lashes. If Ben had had breath to take away, it would have been long gone.

They parted ways after that. Dave and Ben wanted to return home before the sun rose, and Cora was off to continue her search for the mysterious Angelo.

Dave gave her the address to the house, and made her repeat it back to him three times before letting her leave with a warning to not be a stranger.

Ben watched her charmingly bedraggled figure saunter off down the alleyway.

He turned to find Dave grinning at him.

“Uh… She seems nice.”

Dave nodded. “Pretty, too, huh?”

Oh, no, was he really that obvious?

“I didn’t think you were interested in women,” Ben said in an attempt to change the subject as they began the long walk home.

“Oh, I’m not, but I can still appreciate the aesthetics. I think paintings are pretty, too, but me and the _Mona Lisa_ work better as friends.”

Ben laughed, partially out of the astonishment of realizing there was nothing stopping him from strolling onto the next flight to Paris and going to see the _Mona Lisa_ for himself.

The idea was as exhilarating as it was terrifying. For the first time, he thought he sort of understood the appeal of horror flicks.

They passed by that corner again, the one where Klaus had taken an impromptu nap one day, and his thoughts shifted back to less happy things.

He chewed his lip and watched Dave out of the corner of his eye. He was always encouraging his siblings to communicate with each other, to just come out and say how they felt.

He was a bit of a hypocrite, wasn’t he?

He drew in a deep breath. “Dave?”

“Mm? What’s up?”

“I… I’m sorry I haven’t been nicer to you.”

Dave threw him a puzzled smile. “You’ve been nice, Ben.”

“No, not really. Not like I should have been.”

He wrapped his arms around himself as they walked. “It’s just… for so many years, it was me and Klaus, you know? Just the two of us. And I looked out for him the best I could, but he never took any of my advice. He never tried very hard to get clean or anything.

“And then, all of a sudden he’s getting sober for _you,_ and he can control his powers so much better because _you’re_ there, and _you’re_ all he ever talks about, and… I don’t know. I was just kind of feeling like, what am I then, chopped liver?”

He darted a glance in Dave’s direction. He didn’t see any judgment in his gaze.

“I was wrong, for thinking like that. You’re really nice, and you make Klaus so happy, and… and I’m glad you’re around.”

Dave didn’t answer right away, but the silence felt thoughtful rather than awkward.

“You know,” he began slowly, “Klaus talked about you a lot in ‘Nam. He told me all kinds of stories about stuff the two of you had done, and I kept thinking, ‘Fucking hell, does this poor guy ever get a weekend off?’ I love Klaus to death—literally, I guess—but he is a _handful_.”

“Understatement,” Ben muttered.

“Yeah. He’s probably at least two handfuls. So I guess it’s a good thing there’s two of us, huh?”

Ben looked at him in surprise. “What?” he asked, a smile spreading across his face. “Like some kind of tag-team babysitting arrangement?”

“Why not?” Dave said easily. “You’ve been looking after him for all these years, and I get that that’s kind of your thing now. But Ben, who looks after you?”

He was momentarily rendered speechless. “Well… I look after myself, I guess.” He shrugged. “I mean, I’m dead. I’m pretty low maintenance at this point.”

Dave let out a snort of laughter. “Okay, fair enough. Just think about it, alright? It’d break Klaus’s heart if you left for good, but there’s nothing wrong with taking time for yourself here and there. You deserve to be happy as much as anybody else does.”

…Well.

Okay.

He could consider it.

{}{}{}{}{}

“WHERE HAVE YOU TWO BEEN?”

Ben and Dave looked at each other in alarm.

It was a quarter to six, they had literally just stepped foot in the house, and Klaus was coming flying down the staircase wearing one shoe and a pair of Diego’s sweatpants.

He skidded across the marble floor and would have crashed straight into the door if Dave hadn’t become corporeal just in time to grab his shoulders.

“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” he asked in concern. “Did you have a nightmare?”

“Ha! HA!” Klaus shook the shoe in his hand at the ceiling. “I am LIVING a nightmare!”

“Tell us what happened,” said Ben.

“OH, I’m going to tell you! I woke up and wanted to tell someone about this funny dream I had, but you two were nowhere to be found, and then the Thunder from Down Under told me you went out—“

“Is that what we’re calling him now?” Ben asked. “I kind of like it.”

“—so I was going to go look for you, but he kept following me around singing some weird-ass Australian folk song until I took a shower and brushed my teeth first—“

“Is that why you’re all wet? You probably should have toweled off, hon, this floor is pretty slippery.”

“—and that guy CANNOT sing, and he WOULD NOT stop. And now it’s not even six yet, and my day is off to a horrible start, and I really hope you’re both happy with yourselves!”

Dave stroked Klaus’s damp hair soothingly. “So, you woke up, and… I’m not seeing the problem here, babe. Aside from the singing.”

Klaus huffed in exasperation and crossed his arms. “You guys went and did fun stuff without me! That was egregiously uncool, you turds.”

“Sweetheart,” Dave said. “Sweetheart, you were sleeping. What were you expecting us to do all night?”

“I don’t know! Watch me! Make conversation about how angelic I look in repose! Stuff I wouldn’t care about missing!”

Ben blew out ‘pfft’ of laughter. “Dude, you drool like a bloodhound when you sleep. It’s crazy.”

“And cute,” Dave rushed to assure him. “But, yeah. You’d make a pretty slobbery angel.”

Klaus took a step backwards, pointing the shoe in his hand between them. “What’s this? What is this? You two can’t be friends if you’re going to gang up on me.”

He put his hands on his hips and gave them both an imperious look. “I _forbid_ it.”

Ben sighed in irritation. “Oh, okay then. Goodbye forever, Dave. It was nice knowing you.”

Dave pressed a hand to his heart and fixed him with a soulful look. “We’ll always have Paris.”

“Oh my _God,_ if you tell me you went to fucking France without me—“

Dave pressed a sweet kiss to his forehead. “We did not, and I love you. C’mon, why don’t you lay back down for a bit? I’ll rub your back to help you sleep.”

Klaus gave him a baleful look, although all three of them knew he loved being cuddled too much to refuse.

Satisfied that this crisis was averted, Ben began heading to the kitchen. Luther was an early riser, and Mom would be starting breakfast soon.

“Wait, where are you going?” Klaus demanded. “I didn’t tell you about my dream yet!”

“I’m going to ask Mom to teach me how to make muffins,” said Ben, without breaking his stride. “You can just go back to sleep, though, she’ll show me all the steps even if she can’t see me.”

“No, come upstairs with us! I don’t want muffins. I want an entourage.”

Ben rolled his eyes as he stepped through the door into the back hallway, exasperation mixing with fondness.

“Not everything is about you, Klaus.”

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like this story is super weird, but I don't care. It's about the social lives of dead people, so the whole concept was weird from the word go.
> 
> Plus, I don't think letting Klaus have a complete monopoly on TWO whole people's time and attention would be a good thing for anybody. He needs love and support, but also some boundaries.


End file.
